Avast ye mateys! The dreaded Google be takin' a turn for the worse, and by Davy Jones' locker, AI be lurkin' to scuttle it fer good!
2024-01-22
Avast ye scallywags! A plump study in Germany be claimin' that Google search be a mere pawn in the hand o' lowly SEO spam. Arrr, what a sorry state o' affairs!
A study by German researchers has confirmed that Google search is getting worse, according to TechRadar. The year-long research experiment, conducted by Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, analyzed results from Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo search engines. The study focused on product review search terms and found that higher-ranked pages often displayed signs of lower text quality, specifically SEO spam. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing web content for better search engine rankings. However, keeping up with Google's ever-changing algorithms has led to a cottage industry of companies promising to improve search rankings, sometimes at the expense of content quality.While Google performed better than Bing and DuckDuckGo in several areas, the study noted a trend towards simplified, repetitive, and potentially AI-generated content. AI tools, such as ChatGPT, have contributed to an increase in low-quality content specifically designed to target search engine algorithms. This has resulted in a flood of AI-generated content online, with sites like Robots.net churning out articles to draw traffic away from legitimate reviewers and journalists. The researchers warn that internet users have already noticed a torrent of low-quality content drowning out useful information in search results.
Google has acknowledged the study and claimed to have launched specific improvements to address these issues. However, there are concerns about Google's sincerity, given its own use of AI for search results. The researchers hope that changes will be made to ensure that search results are written by humans, for humans. The article concludes by mentioning other related articles, such as the end of Google Assistant and Apple's secret development of a Google Search killer.